My reading group came to read Jane Fletcher Geniesse's biography, Passionate nomad: The life of Freya Stark, by a somewhat circuitous route - and it started with my blog. One of our members had read my Monday Musings post on 19th century travellers, and suggested that we read a 19th century travel writer. Somehow, as … Continue reading Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Passionate nomad: The life of Freya Stark (Review)
Literature by period
Louisa Atkinson, A voice from the country: January (Review)
Louisa Atkinson, as I wrote in a post a few years ago, was a pioneer Australian writer. She was a significant botanist, our first Australian-born woman novelist, and the first Australian woman to have a long-running column in a major newspaper. It was a natural history series titled A Voice from the Country which ran in The Sydney Morning Herald for … Continue reading Louisa Atkinson, A voice from the country: January (Review)
Friedrich Gerstäcker, Australia: A German traveller in the Age of Gold (Review)
Friedrich Gerstäcker's Australia: A German traveller in the Age of Gold was first published in its original German, as Australien, in 1854. Gerstäcker did prepare, at that time, an English language version of his travels, but the section on Australia, at least, was much shorter than his German edition, and is all English readers have been able to … Continue reading Friedrich Gerstäcker, Australia: A German traveller in the Age of Gold (Review)
Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree (Review)
As I explained in my post last year on Annie Dillard's The Maytrees, we are slowly listening to some of the audiobooks we gave Mr Gums' mother in the last years of her life, and have just finished Olive Ann Burn's epic-length, Cold Sassy Tree. From what I've read in Wikipedia, Olive Ann Burns was another late … Continue reading Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree (Review)
Louise Mack, The world is round (Review)
I've had Louise Mack's debut novel, The world is round, on my TBR for about 20 years. Published in 1896, when she was 26 years old, it's a fairly straightforward tragicomedy about a young well-to-do 21-year-old girl, Jean, who aspires to be a writer, and the two men who love her, the 30-plus-year-old self-confident, successful lawyer-and-writer Musgrave, and … Continue reading Louise Mack, The world is round (Review)
Monday musings on Australian literature: Louise Mack
I promised in my Reading Highlights post that my first review of the year would be for a book from my TBR pile, and so it will be - hopefully in a couple of days. However, I suspect that the book, and maybe even the author, will be unknown to most of my readers here so I've decided … Continue reading Monday musings on Australian literature: Louise Mack
Eudora Welty, A curtain of green (Review)
This week I received the Library of America's annual email in which they list their "Top 10 Story of the Week selections of 2016". I've only read eleven of their selections this year, but two - Kate Chopin's "A pair of silk stockings" (my review) and Willa Cather's "Enchanted bluff" (my review) - are in their Top Ten. … Continue reading Eudora Welty, A curtain of green (Review)
Georgia Blain: Births deaths marriages: True tales (Review)
Poignant is a word I actively avoid in my review posts, as it's such a review cliché, but sometimes a book really does call for it, and the late Georgia Blain's essay-collection-cum-memoir, Births deaths marriages, is such a book. In the last essay, she talks of her mother, broadcaster, activist and non-fiction writer, Anne Deveson, trying her … Continue reading Georgia Blain: Births deaths marriages: True tales (Review)
Elizabeth Jolley, An innocent gentleman (Mini-Review)
Note: this is a mini-review compiled from the notes I made when I read Elizabeth Jolley's An innocent gentleman before blogging. I found them on some scrappy pieces of paper while decluttering and figured my blog is the best place to keep them ... not floating in some drawer somewhere! Most if not all of Elizabeth … Continue reading Elizabeth Jolley, An innocent gentleman (Mini-Review)
Pierre Lemaitre, The great swindle (Review)
As I was reading Pierre Lemaitre's literary page-turner, The great swindle, I started to wonder about the endings of books, what I look for, what I most appreciate. What I don't look for is neat, happy conclusions. There are exceptions to this of course. Jane Austen, for example, but she was writing at a different time when … Continue reading Pierre Lemaitre, The great swindle (Review)
Whispering Gums 